


In Search of the Unknown Episode 2

by KennyF7



Series: In search of the unknown episodes [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anthology, Hidden meanings, Horror, Lovecraftian, Mystery, Paranormal, Psychological, Suspense, Thriller, disturbing topics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:00:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28665123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennyF7/pseuds/KennyF7
Series: In search of the unknown episodes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100765





	In Search of the Unknown Episode 2

Story of Eli Luther   
About my experiences with my high school pool  
I live in a small town named Jo-Lake, in Kansas. It was what you would expect from a partly suburbanized town. I say partly because half of it was rural houses that had been passed down from generation by generation. Having long dirt roads that were surprisingly fun to glide around on.  
The other half was where I lived. My family like most others moving came for the new meatpacking factory. New businesses were popping up all over. My father was the proprietor in the creation of the first supermarket in that town.   
A lot more things were being built now that there was an influx of workers. New parks, new houses, new buildings, new benches, and new roads. The most surprising thing that didn’t need much added to it was the high school.  
From what I heard the high school was built long before any of this happened and it was for most of its time in the town, was considered too big for how many students were there. The halls were wide, made for a large number of kids to be moving in and out the corridors. Most of its rooms weren't used, maybe five out of the twenty classrooms, and after being unused for so long was barely cleaned by the custodians. There was a school swimming pool, that until I and the other suburbanites arrived, never had a swimming team. The architecture was even more jarring, with completely unrelated rooms having doors leading to another. It was confusing, and I and my friends sometimes called this place a maze.  
Before moving to this landlocked town, I grew up near the east coast. As a child I loved swimming. I relished in the feeling of pushing through the water, feeling the cold water against my skin. To move in the water felt almost meditative. Some people joked that God intended me to be a fish, but there was a slight accident, and my soul was thrown into a human body. So, I was the perfect fit to become one of the members of the town's first swim team.  
Another thing that kept me there was my friend, Joshua. Well, I say friend, but that’s all I could have called him at the time. It was the 90’s and we just came off the Reagan Era and the Aids epidemic. It’s hard to say if my family would have ever accepted me, I never told them. The best I could have hoped for was they tolerated me, but I knew that they would have treated me as “the other”, and I wasn’t for taking my chances on how they’ll react. Plus, I knew that I would be ostracized by at least half of the people there, and that’s being generous.   
So, our relationship stayed secretive, having to find different places to hide, so we could be together in peace. Cornfields, and abandoned farm, the janitor's closet in my father's supermarket. Whoever sees it as romantic is wrong, and reads too many novels. The feeling that we could never express ourselves, that we could never be in the open holding hands, that if anybody found out we would probably lose every ounce of respect and dignity anybody felt towards us. It ate at us, made us scared and jumpy when together, and we couldn’t feel safe alone.   
Luckily for us, no one ever found out. I was muscular at the time and was perceived as a jock, so nobody accused me or called me names. On the other hand, Joshua was weaker, and less aggressive, more passive. They saw him as feminine and thusly gay, and he was bullied for it. This logic was painful to see in action, and I felt so much seething rage for the people that threw slurs at Joshua like he was some freak.  
It was close to the summer. It was getting warmer, and the break was ticking closer and closer along with our last year of high school. Joshua and I had plans to celebrate, and we wanted to do it alone.   
We tried to look for a nice place to hide out, and just enjoy each other’s company. That’s when Joshua suggested to me that we should go to the swimming pool when the school is closed. It sounded amazing to me, and Joshua knew it would be a great time for me.   
We scoped out the place, seeing when the janitor left, how to get in, how to be as quiet as possible. We made sure there was no room for error, especially since we would be punished even if we weren't homosexual.   
I was so excited when the day finally came. We parked in a parking lot far from the school and walked there. We talked, made jokes, did a bit of flirting.   
When we made it, just before we crawled through the tiny window into the school pool, Joshua kissed me. I will never forget that moment.  
Joshua crawled in first since he was skinnier than me, and I would take some time to get through. Once he got down, he signaled me to go next, as he walked through the lockers into where the pool was. He teased me for how long it was taking when he suddenly went silent. I got worried and crawled through the window as quickly as I could. He could have been caught by the Janitor or worst security. I landed on the tile floor hard and ran to see what happened.  
Standing at the opening, completely still and quiet was Joshua. He seemed to be staring into the pool. I stood by him and was about to chew him out for making me so worried. Then I saw what he was glaring at with so much intensity.  
It's hard to describe this, but the pool had no bottom. It just went down and from as far as I could tell infinitely. It was this bottomless, water-filled rectangular drop. It went so far down that light did not reach and you could see the border where light ends, and complete darkness begins. On the border, the shadows seemed jagged like mountains. It looked like it was trying to crawl and expand.  
The darkness was mesmerizing, so grand it felt like it was going to consume us completely. It reminded me of space, and its infiniteness and depth lessness. I felt an existential dread from it that boils my blood and trains my eyes when I think of it.  
I had the feeling it was calling for us. To jump in the vastness of the pool and become one in a careless universe. It felt like a force of nature like it was always there, yet we ignored it because our feeble minds could never understand something that seemed so impossible. It shattered my reality and made me think deeper and deeper until I had the sense I was being crushed and my lungs were being filled with liquid.   
It nauseated me, and I had to run into one of the bathrooms where I puked. When I came back, I saw Joshua in the pool, the infinite just below him. He told me to come with him, that we had to see what was at the bottom, that he had to see. I was wary of this, I felt terrified. Yet, I had to go, because from the look I saw in his eyes, he would've gone without me. So, we both dived in, swimming deeper and deeper. The water felt warm, it's heat increasing to the point of feeling unbearable. The pressure was slowly crushing us, but we kept going. That is until something began to push us up to the surface, and no matter how much we put into our swimming, we kept going up. We both gasped for air when we made up. Joshua and I climbed up. He sat at the edge of the pool, starring with this look of confusion and incredulous. He seemed angry and even betrayed at the pool. He turned to me.  
“Why was I not accepted”   
I began to feel scared. I asked him what he meant.  
“Why won’t it take me down, why does it reject me like everything else!” He burst out.   
He began to weep.  
That’s when I asked if we could go, and Joshua reluctantly said yes.  
After that night things felt weird with Joshua. He began to zone out more. He became tired and more obsessive over things.   
The thing that bothered me most was when he bought heavyweights and rope.   
That I had to talk to him about. He told me he was going to see what was down there, that he couldn’t handle not knowing. Nothing would stop him.  
I had to watch over him now.  
A few days later after basically stalking him, he made his move. He got in his car and drove away with all the stuff he bought. I chased him to the pool building. I saw that he broke in through the front door. He knew that no one would catch him where he was going.  
He was right, not even I could save him. He jumped in. The rope harness he made carried the heavyweights pulled him down. The water enveloped him and with a calm demeanor I never saw from him before, he accepted his fate. I however did not. I swam down after him.  
I was able to catch up to him. I tried to tear the harnesses off him. He fought me tooth and nail, never letting up. Throwing violent punches at me in the dark. The light from the surface became darker and darker.  
My head felt light from a lack of oxygen, and I felt as the dark, uncaring liquid began to seep into my lungs.   
The descent was slow, the water seeming to resist us. It was almost like it had a high salt content that hindered our advance. Then suddenly, something tucked at Joshua and pulled him into the deep. His arms above his head, and eyes of surprise. It accepted him. I saw nothing grab him. The water itself took him.   
I tried to go after, but the water started to push me forcefully up. If I were not in the water I would have wept. Sobbed for the man I loved, that was taken by the awful deep.  
My head raised out of the water, and I crawled out, weak and exhausted. I coughed water, trying to breathe, feeling in shock. I wanted to no longer be near this cursed mass. I shuddered in fear, looking upon this abyss.  
I will never forgive myself for what happened.   
I was never able to tell anyone what happened. They would believe me insane, mad, and throw me somewhere that I could forever rave such things in an isolated white room. The missing posters came up, and they weathered and broke down from where they were. Joshua's parents will never know what happened and telling them the truth would do nothing but upset them. They would see me as someone making a joke from his absence in their life.  
I did not leave that town. I stayed there as its new swim coach, though I refuse to get in the water. I also keep the windows locked, and make sure I am the last to leave.   
Then one day it came again. The damn thing came again to mock me.   
Just before I left, I saw it. That abyss, that darkness, that insufferable blackness that wakes me up in a cold sweat. It never left. Maybe it has always been there in wait. I felt my blood boil with raise. My legs shook at the horrible shadows that played at the edge. They were even different. Moving like tendrils, they were alive and climbing, slowly and methodically.   
Then I thought as I stared into that infinite well. Who else was taken by it? There were a few other missing kids. How many were taken by this pool's beck and call? To have to sink into the darkness and have their lungs be filled with water.  
A chill rose through my spine. I needed to do something about this. To stop it. To find one this is.  
If you are reading this, it is already too late. I will be sinking. To see what took Joshua, and hopefully to stop it.  
This is the end of my story, and most likely the end of my life.  
From Dalen's research, which for him was slightly easier with the name of the town being mentioned, he found that there had been a kid named Joshua who disappeared around 1995 near the end of the semester. There was no evidence of where he had gone and what had happened. There is no explanation given as to why he would have run away. Some speculate it was due to his past of being bullied, though no money or possessions were taken, only the clothes on his back, and his car was found not far from the school campus. Whether he was kidnapped or not is still disputed, and no one has ever come out as to find him. Joshua was later registered as dead by his parents, and the search for him ended.  
Swim coach and Sociology teacher Eli Luther went missing around 2 decades after Joshua, near 2018. Eli was last seen by the Janitor, who explicitly mentioned Eli staying after he left. After a few days, people noticed his car was still in the parking lot, but he never attended class or practice. Eventually, an investigation was started, and the document that Dalen had read was found. Eli's case has remained unsolved.  
The most bizarre fact Dalen found, was about the school itself. The name of the School was named "Far Shore Highschool". Its construction was funded and designed by Henry Gricksfeld. Gricksfeld was a fair millionaire, known for his help in Nautical engineering and later providing supplies for NASA to launch satellites.  
The reason why the Highschool was made by such an auspicious person is a mystery. Jo-Lake was neither his hometown nor a place he visited often. Reporters did all they could to get any hint as to why any he never caved in at their constant questions.   
At the end of the creation of the School, he was reported to have said “Our world is a mere spec in a cosmos that neither feels nor cares. We are like ants that trying to conceive Mount Everest, and we may never understand such heights. Yet we do all we can, our belief that we can know the unimaginable is greater than any other creature on this green rock called earth. So, may this grand call for knowledge be provided by this place, and give over what we know to the next generation, so they can discover new and untested waters"   
The Gricksfeld family has carried over his legacy, and they continue to make deep-sea submarines and still have a small piece in the shipbuilding industry. Some in the news have speculated that the family may invest in new avenues.  
This story was perplexing to Dalen. Both on the story itself and how he discovered it. He found it with all the other emails. Yet, this one called to him. Something in his mind ticked when he read it and did research into it. It felt like he was meant to find it. Something felt off though like there was more. More to what was said, and what the high school was built for. No matter how much research he did, it gave little evidence as to if this idea was anything more than a hunch.  
Maybe he and his crew could travel to these places. That could add a new dynamic to the series. Trevor and David were fine with travel. David, especially since his main talent, was that of a cameraman and sound man, and he was not much for recording Dalen in front of a green screen the whole time.   
What kept Dalen from going was the problem of if these stories are real. He did not want David’s head bitten off or Travis to be killed by an evil swimming pool. For now, they were staying at their studio, until he felt that his team was safe.  
Trevor saw his friend's worries as a bit absurd. These stories to him were just remarkably interesting lies. A nice urban legend to tell at a campfire, but never to take with any grain of seriousness. To him, these bizarre cases were just stories that sprouted from normal occurrences. The disappearance of two people whose case is only tied to that they were friends, and a priest having an overly theatrical suicide.   
David was tied between Dalen and Trevor's in terms of what he believed. He was skeptical of ghost stories, but he also wanted to believe them. To add a new layer to a life he saw as dull and cruel. Though these stories worried him. He would be quite disturbed if these things existed. That humans, despite being the Apex species were still able to be hunted and have their mind preyed upon by things they do not understand.


End file.
